After watching my typo-averages skyrocket over a couple months of having a broken LDC, I have finally gotten a new phone. Although I was given a recommendation¹ for a Vodafone 715, I ended up going with a Nokia E65. It’s a used phone, picked up from TradeMe.

I’ve only had about half a day of use out of it, and so far, it seems like a pretty damn good phone. I’ll have to watch my battery usage to see what sort of condition it is in, but there doesn’t seem to be any usability defects. I’ve been able to exploit a few of the nice features, like wireless access, but I have a lot of configuration yet to do (pick up email, prefer data to not come over over-priced GPRS, get some music on there).

There are downsides to buying a used phone. There is no warranty, there may be defects, and you may get more than you asked for. In this case, 44 images, 3 videos and a bunch of email in an authenticated IMAP email connection. I like to think that I’m one of the good guys, though. Everything was deleted as I found it. I have no need to exploit someone who didn’t clean up properly after himself. Besides, he included a 2GB memory card and adapter. I certainly won’t complain about that. I will have to get a set of headphones that work with the Nokia data port. I could use bluetooth, but why drain the battery faster than necessary?

I’ll probably write more about this phone after I get used to it and learn more about it. I’m pretty happy off the start; I hope that continues.

¹ The 715 is a very capable phone. I’d recommend it as it was recommended to me, especially for the price. However, I was taken by the wireless smart-phone capability of the E65.

It’s hard to come to a conclusion about who was at fault for the scare on the bus this morning. The driver is typically a bit aggressive, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt unsafe. However, I’m not convinced that his driving was the problem.

There is an off-ramp to Petone, which leads to my work and an industrial park. As a result, there is a fair bit of heavy-vehicle traffic that takes the exit. In this case, we were late to merge into the off-ramp lane. This isn’t overly uncommon; bus drivers often count on the kindness of other drivers to let them merge in when necessary. As it turned out, our bus tried to merge with less than 500m before the off-ramp.

This is where things started to go weird. There was about 1.5 bus-lengths available to slide into, but that was quickly cut off by a freight truck moving up from behind. Instead of allowing the bus to merge, he effectively cut us off. Horns were honked and our driver continued to be assertive, but to no avail. The freight truck blocked us off all the way to the meridian of the off-ramp, where we were forced to make a sudden stop.

Most of the passengers were a little frightened by the event and I have a feeling that the driver may get into a little trouble over this, but I’m not convinced that he was in the wrong. I’m tempted to think that the truck driver acted irresponsibly and put us all in danger. Having said that, we should have merged earlier.

This points to a problem that I see all over the city. Drivers – car drivers – will often stream past a bus that is trying to pull out of a bus stop. Even after it has merged in, it’s not uncommon to see another car or two race up from behind to overtake the bus? The problem is that buses aren’t given much respect on the road. Can we fix this somehow?